Trick Yourself Into Shape: 2 Establish A Baseline

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The next step is to find out what your baseline is. Go online and do a quick assessment to gauge your base metabolic rate, or how many calories you burn in a given day just by kind of being alive. This will vary based on your height, current weight, and how active you are. For most of you, assuming you came to this piece looking to lose weight, that number is almost certainly north of 2,000 calories a day. Once you know that number, you can start to make decisions based on it. For those of you who don't know, there is approximately 3,500 calories in a pound of fat. As some have pointed out, this number isn't exact, and it might be closer to 2,800 or 3,700 depending upon who you ask. For broad strokes purposes, let's go with the 3,500 number though. If you want to lose a pound per week, which is more than we recommend, you would have to create a 500 calorie deficit each day.
So going back to ego depletion, your goal now is going to be to establish dietary habits based on when you are most likely to be able to make good decisions. So for instance for me personally, I'm often very tired and less likely to be able to keep my dietary promises to myself at night. This is probably going to be true for a lot of you out there, especially all you 9-to-5'ers. If it is, what you're going to want to do is try to make the best possible food decisions for breakfast and for lunch each day, knowing that when you get home you're free to eat pretty much whatever you would like. Aim to hit less than 50% of your caloric budget for the day during what you have assessed to be your high willpower times of the day, knowing that you still have plenty of room for the times of the day when you know you are more likely to cheat. For some of you, your low willpower periods might be at lunch or breakfast instead.